Hello, Again
by Nerumi H
Summary: Their relationship was unforgivable in the end. - When Len is locked in the hospital in critical condition, accusations make Rin wonder if it's her toxicity that's killing him, and if the only villain in their romance was herself. Even as he begins to try and talk back, and she realizes he's still in love...
1. Chapter 1

**.title.: **Hello, Again.

**.summary.: **Their relationship was unforgivable in the end, but when Len is sent to the hospital in critical condition, Rin must revisit all the mistakes to find where things went wrong. Even when Len, in love until the end, tries to speak to her, accusations make Rin wonder if it's her toxicity that's killing him, and if from the very start, the only villain was her.

**.characters.: **Len / Rin – Gumi – Dell – VY2

**.warnings.: **fractions of violence, bad flirting, odd chat logs, and language.

**.cover art by.: **Hakuseki

**.a/n.:** Since when do I write Rin and Len? I haven't written a story centering on these two since what, 2011? That feels like forever ago! And a romance fic, at that? I'm alarmed with myself.

My friend showed me this song and I fell in love with it immediately. Interpretation of it from what I read online wasn't as foggy as theories usually are, but it was tricky to find something I liked and could work with and not get sick of halfway through. So I just…mostly made up my own. Shrug. I also didn't really read any medical articles, so, errrrh.

Although I'm trying to keep the writing style less heavy as the tale goes on, there is a lot of...weighted things to do with Rin and Len's relationship. With it may come some warnings that I'll update at the start of every chapter that it's involved in, but I'll be mindful of the audience.

(Character list subject to change.)

The Very Important Songfic Song (AMAZING Append version, whoo!): youtube clip v=zFSDccCijGw

**X**

_I can hear your words,_

_Though I am yet to understand them;_

_I'm going to trace your words,_

_Hoping that they will be words of love._

- _Hello Again_

**CHAPTER ONE**

**[ -Rin- ]**

"Are you gonna go see him?"

Rin stares at the letter as she slides it back on the table. Nudges the sides to get it to sit perfectly straight against the lip of the fake wood, and then replaces her hands into her lap. It's a typed letter – halfway between modern and ancient, nostalgia and the monotony of the present. Maybe there was a pigeon somewhere in the process to mail it to her, or when she steps away it will self-destruct. How thoughtful of his parents, to construct a metaphor for what the words held in the most unintentional of ways.

"Rin?"

"Hm?"

"Are you going to…you know. They asked you to come."

"I know." She swallows. Her throat is drier than she thought it was. Her inhales stick in the gummy saliva coating her mouth, tasting sourly of the choking apple incense that swirled in the condo. She touches at the letter again as if to make sure it's real – but the fact that Gumi is even asking questions says that yes, it is.

Gumi leans back in her seat at the table, folding her arms over her chest. It's not out of frustration, but the defence Rin recognised in herself. She tries not to mirror Gumi. He liked to do that, mock her irritation and her shyness and the way she would fold away.

She sinks in her chair anyways.

Gumi says, "I mean, this is…wow. I… Okay, 'wow' isn't the right word, 'wow' is what you use when people tell you their son's got a swanky job offer or, like, never stops talking about their cat, and – not…"

"Not for when someone's in a coma."

"…Yeah." Gumi makes a move for the paper, but snaps her arm back an instant later even though Rin hasn't reacted at all. "Well, they didn't really say 'coma', but just…"

"Critical condition."

Rin finds it in herself to sit back up and really take the paper in her hands. She doesn't read it over again, but her gaze drifts to the farewell. The only handwritten part, like that's the only personalized element. Meant for _her_. A thin, wiry paragraph, written over the edge of the ruler so the tails of 'g's and 'y's don't match. Her name is written without the ruler, as if they're used to writing it in empty spaces. It makes her think again of unintentional analogies, and this one makes her heart sink.

She wasn't part of Len's family and she knows that.

Rin pulls the envelope closer; she slides open the cover with a chalky scrape of papercut against papercut.

They would cram her into every empty space they could fit her, with their manners, smiles, honesty, tough love, and as many sugared dinners as they wanted, but the truth of it was that she didn't belong there anymore. She'd torn herself out and screamed and drilled him with the threats of the law but here they were, asking for her to look over Len's dying body and speak. They were expecting her to say anything but "It's your fault," again.

So she places the invitation back into the thin white envelope, flips it so the familiar names on the front are crushed against the table. She gives it a nudge until slips to the center of the table, and then she gets up.

Gumi blinks from the envelope to Rin and back again. She wiggles her butt into her chair and says like she's already out of breath, "If you want to talk…"

"If I did, I would have said something already." Rin smiles softly at her friend while her hands absently rub up her forearms. "I'm going to shower. You can throw that out if you want."

"But, Rin – "

"If you want to see him, I'm sure they'll let you too." Rin shrugs and turns away. She realises as she tries to get to the stairs that the nerves up the back of her calves feel burnt right through. She pretends to shiver to get any stares about that condition off her back. It's alright. I'm not sad. I've just turned to ice.

Gumi doesn't say anything more, so Rin decides it's safe to leave completely. Her speed picks up, her aim the staircase and the bend that hides her behind a wall where she would be able to let herself go and scream into her hands and shatter her own ears in the shower –

"Rin, this time will be different."

She may have been ready for that; Gumi never knows how to drop a subject. Rin answers, "Yeah, different because he's dying."

"And…you know, the last times you saw him he was being…just no good. But now he can't really talk back, and – "

Rin's shoulders shake with a small laugh. She's not trying to be a bitch, but Gumi catches onto the wrong idea and her voice is quick to the defense.

"I'm not being rude, I'm being honest, Rin! You can say all you need to say without him arguing or you feeling weird about saying it… It's like writing a letter but never sending it. You get your message out but he doesn't know. It can be easier. Don't you think that would be good for you?"

Rin scoffs tiredly, "What do I have to say? I think he's heard it all." There aren't many ways to miss what's coming at you in a shouting match, after all.

Gumi makes a small 'hm' noise, and Rin hears her take the envelope into her hands. And she says with the sobriety that had first scared Rin when Gumi had given her the paper and said what it was, details uneasy, all broken-hearted and throwing her bloody sleeves into Rin's face like Gumi always did: "I think there's a lot more that you've been too loud to let him really hear."

"He won't hear it now either." Rin takes the stairs two at a time.

**X**

But Gumi's words hold on. They wash over her in scalding scrapes during her shower, and she has no further luck in blurring them while she tries to sleep. Her fault for abandoning ship so quickly, perhaps, but she finally gives in and promises herself one day, one try. Alone. She'll dodge his parents by sneaking in faster than they can plan a trip (they were never private people, and Rin wouldn't be surprised if they visited Len with a party of fifty towing behind them), and has no doubts that that's the only reason she wants to go quickly.

That, and she doesn't think she can deal with this nerve-induced wash-cycle stomach ache for another day.

**X**

Rin checks in at the front office, washes her hands in a strictness that borders in her own view as neurotic, and then takes the stairs to his room. No way can she stand and wait in a slow elevator with all their cushioned bumps and jolts. Not now. Not when she's so ill.

A nurse lets her into the room and there are no briefs on etiquette – maybe Rin looks too scared for the woman to dare assume she'll try to shake him awake or something insane like that. Maybe it's the same deal that gets her in at this time: family. Having creepily similar last names finally makes a use of itself.

The door closes behind her. She wants a lock to click to make sure no part of herself dares slip back outside and take off running down the concrete. The sound of her sneakers against the tiled floor is like the tick-tocks of a clock, even though the only noise that belongs here is the steady beeping of the machine he's hooked up to.

His parents didn't say how it happened.

Rin carefully pulls up the guest chair, turning away her head to make sure the seat doesn't hit the bed or her heels. She sits. She has her eyes shut, and the way her name was scripted so carefree on the bottom of the letter floats in the warming abyss behind her eyelids.

That reminds her she has to hurry before his parents come in and find her and ruin her steady calm, and that gives her the final push to open her eyes.

Her breath clots in her throat.

He looks dead already.

Len is positioned artificially on the pillow, his chin tilted up to the door, narrow shoulders slumped. In his nose is thin yellowish tubing that makes his skin looks even more sickly; he's blotched with thick bruises like leather under his temples and fused over the delicate bones of his face. The hair he always used to make a fuss about tying back lies in a mess of waves and haphazard curls against the deflated pillow and strands are clinging to the sheen of sweat on his neck; veins are burst in his bitten lips like a garden of thorns.

And bandages peek from their hidden places on his arms: dodge the IV puncturing his wrists, frame the inhumanly steady tide of his breathing.

Rin wants to leave – walk, run, silent, screaming, a whole dictionary and Dr Seuss book of ways she could leave him behind like she's tried to do so often, but instead the Dr Seuss idea strikes her as funny and it's something he would say.

Slow and sober like poison, she whispers his name.

Her frozen voice hangs in the hospital room – it's a crystallized tremor, crisply echoing and reaching nothing. She listens to herself speaking that sickness and her throat begins to seize, blood pounding wetly in her ears, a corkscrew of pain drilling in through her ribs like she's starved for something. She will not cry. She cannot cry for him again.

He breathes.

This isn't easy.

Even talking to herself right now won't be easy. Gumi is a liar who has never watched her ex-lover float between death and life, when all he can do is exist off of the air and fluids they're forcing into his body.

But she's nailed into that chair and does not run.

Gumi is just a liar…but Gumi's words haven't let her sleep.

As she contemplates how to begin, she watches the parting of his thin lips as each flow of air passes through them, soft, unwavering, not a single beat being skipped and she wishes she could have that for a second. Forget about trying to regulate herself – things her own subconscious should be able to handle by itself – and just focus on what she needs to say.

With a snap she grips her hands over her knees, tight enough to feel her nails pressing into her palms. She hisses, "It's not like you need a perfect draft."

And Len just breathes.

She focuses on it – the way he's asleep and here and so far gone, the way he doesn't twitch (he used to do that in his sleep a lot, like a snoring, fidgety rabbit), just a steady weightlessness of oxygen flowing in and out of his bloodstream, the measured beeping that effortlessly takes control with his body. How he's at the ocean floor, washed upon by the aftereffect of waves and just not caring.

Here under the water she finds the ability to speak.

"I… Hi, Len. I don't even know if you want me here, but your family did, apparently, even if I am currently avoiding them. No offense to them. I just would feel weird if they were here. …Weirder than I already do.

"…It's so quiet. I didn't know that was even possible between us anymore." A crooked smile steals its way onto her face, but just as quickly it's gone. "I don't know how much I like it… Kind of awkward. So, just so you know, I don't have an apology. It's never really crossed my mind. You're the one who should be sorry, but – "

_'But you already apologized enough.'_

"But I just don't know how ready I am to accept it, alright? Or if I'm ever gonna be. You did some shit, Len, and I want an explanation why. But unless you can master telepathy while you're lying here, I think we're stuck at square one."

Rin pauses. Len doesn't move, timeless. After watching his eyelids and seeing no flickers, she says, "I've also done shit, I guess. And for that I want an explanation too, but it's even less likely to get an answer from you on that than it is to know why you…why you let me break your heart."

A hesitant, untimely laugh scrambles up her throat and she practically coughs it out like she's choking. The stupid words spill too. "I can't shake the feeling that you're still listening."

With a sudden skip of its rhythm, Rin's heart returns to her head and pulses there insistently on the back of a spontaneously growing headache. She's wrenched out of the funk with him – breaking the surface of the water and feeling every part of her struggle to gasp.

"…I'm done," she whispers and is suddenly on her feet; with a tick-tick-tock she finds out that the only easy thing to do in this room is leave.

And Len just breathes.

**[ -Len- ]**

She reached me in a storm.

Rin is a misty haze that trickles in through your lungs and feeds into your bloodstream until all you can think and feel is her. She takes you over. She's the pleasurable sickness – she's the fumes of drugs and chocolaty incense.

And she was here.

I heard her voice…but not for real. Not what felt like real. It reminded me, reminds me, of the muffled locked-up sound from when you're trying to hide, and you've found a real good spot like a little kid giggling or like you're bleeding all over the floor, and sounds creep in on you. And you're scared. And just for a big laugh, your body blocks out the details so you don't know if they're below you or a floor away or out of the house or about to knot a hand in your shirt.

She was just…all around me.

Maybe it was her voice that woke me up or maybe it made me realise I was awake all along.

* * *

**.a/n.:** I hope you liked this chapter~! It's a bit slow-going but will pick up with more characters in the next chapter.

Also, care to please review? Seconds of your time for the hours of my work, and it keeps me motivated. (:


	2. Chapter 2

**.a/n.: **I still don't really know how I like to write Len. He's a fun character even if his whole existence is like a parody of himself, but I usually write him far more serious and cold. So here is my intro to Len when they were first friends!

And yes, so far all the lyrics on chapters are from songs called Hello Again. Is this attention to detail? Coincidence? Laziness? We just don't know.

**.warnings.:** Len being a dork to a painful amount.

**X**

_Hello, hello again;_

_You might have forgot_

_The journey ends;_

_You tied your knots,_

_And you made your friends;_

_You left the scene_

_Without a trace,_

_One hand on the ground,_

_One hand in space_

- _The Cars_

**CHAPTER TWO**

**[ -Somewhere In Between- ]**

The kid was nonsense in the purest definition of the word.

Both tenth-grade students, both showed up for the same job on the same day, and that's where Rin thought their similarities would end, but as fate would have it, their after-closing shifts coincided and so did their interests. She could say they fit together well. They laughed at the same things and thought along the same lines and she kept finding him mirroring her when he didn't mean to be. She was quieter than she got credit for, he was louder than even needed credit. He was stubborn, and she always got other people to make her decisions.

But that wasn't enough, she often tried to convince herself, and did it now too, as she shook the bag of pink icing and readied it above a row of peach cream-coloured cupcakes. That wasn't enough for him to take a liking to her.

"Hey, Rinny~." Len appeared with a song, ducking into the back-room bakery as he swept up the remnants of sugar, flavour mix, and crumbled sprinkles off the concrete floor.

"Hi, Len," she answered amiably enough, but kept her eyes determinedly on her work.

She heard him approaching, the sound of his scratching broom like a flour sifter as he spun it against the floor. She could also hear his boots – lace-up and a bit too big for him and adorable – clopping against the painted lavender concrete, an interpretive dance jangling on his nerves.

She bit her lip and finished a crooked swirl of pink on her third cupcake. In an instant, she felt his chin plop onto her shoulder, causing her to nearly jump out of her chair.

To finally see him and pretend to have an accusation, Rin whipped around – gleaming cerulean eyes, rounded jaw, the pull of his crooked grin edging a tiny blush onto his cheeks; Len had his hands up in innocence.

"Sorry for freaking you out," he said, and tossed his broom to the other hand. The non-dominant one, so he was planning taking a break.

Rin cursed herself for being so hyperaware about him, but at the same time, she had to intently try not to smile too hard. For his sake she lightened her voice: "You didn't freak me out. I just don't want you touching me so close to the food."

"Oh, ouch, Rin."

"There's a reason you're the janitor boy."

"Excuse me, I'm the best janitor this place has ever seen. I'm dedicated," he held the broom off the floor and upside down, other arm stuck on his hip, "to protect this bakery from devastation, to unite all sweettooths within this nation, to denounce the evils of bacteria and stray hairs, to extend our reach to the five-stars above!"

Rin felt herself unable to keep a straight face; on her stool she leaned back, cheerful laughter joining Len's poor improvised remix. He kept going, though, puffing out his skinny chest and pointing at himself.

"Len!" With the loud scuffing of his shoes he did a half turn and held out the broom, presenting it too.

A loud second of silence passed between them as if waiting for the broom to actually speak, then finally Len haltingly added, "…Alright then!"

While Len spun the broom back properly on the floor, Rin caught her voice amidst all her reckless giggling. Len sashayed up to her as she accused, "You didn't even finish the motto!"

Len rolled his eyes. "I'm a man of many poorly-done parodies, Rin, I can't dedicate all my time to one."

"You're the biggest dweeb I've ever met."

He laughed. "You should see me when I'm not bored out of my mind. I promise, I'm mature."

She rolled her eyes with a smile and made sure he saw it before trying, regrettably, to return to her work. Another swirl was completed before he suddenly grew very – very – close.

She was immediately aware that one of his arms was around her back, planted on the edge of the table in perfect bumping reach from her elbow. His head hovered at her shoulder again. His blonde hair smelt sweet, but it was the rough tremor underneath his voice slipping into her ears that finally pushed Rin off the edge and got her to blush like mad.

"Whatcha up to?" Len asked.

Attempting to compose herself, Rin gestured at the line of bare cupcakes that went all the way down the lengthy serving counter. "I'm on décor duty."

Len reached out to touch one of the cupcakes, but luckily she wasn't flustered enough to forgo smacking him away. She said, "These are for the people you should be _protecting_, duh."

"Sorry, sorry. You know, you're pretty good at this decorating stuff."

She blinked widely but didn't look up. "It's not that hard."

"Then why'd you get hired?"

"I dunno. Because I can smile real pretty?"

He chuckled at her sarcasm, the sound intimately close.

Shaking her head, Rin tugged a cupcake towards her by pinching the thin papery cup. "See. Swi-irl." She made an example of it, the sugary glitter catching the unflattering lights above, but to her horror Len's thin-fingered hand darted forwards and stole it.

"Len!" she blurted – he let go of the table and half-turned again so his lower back smacked against the counter and he was left grinning at Rin with the cupcake at his chin and a positively evil glint in his eye.

She tried not to ball her fists. "Len," she repeated.

And he just said, "Now I've got your attention and you don't have to be a self-deprecating moaner. You know you do more than just ice cupcakes, right? Did you forget?"

Rin bit the inside of her lip. It was true – occasionally they asked her to do decorations on the customisable cakes, otherwise known as trusting her with what could make-or-break a purchase. And of _course_ Len knew. He'd been paying perfect attention to her ever since they'd met.

She smiled softly, propping her chin on her hand and elbow on the table. He raised an eyebrow at her, like a question.

"I know."

"Yeah," he said, "so you know you've got talent. I mean, I'm a guy, and I have to pretend I don't know anything about the aesthetic appeal of cake, but you got it down."

She laughed earnestly, and despite the ever-impending doom of her blushing, he always seemed to have the ability to make her feel comfortable. Even when he was just babbling like now.

"Don't laugh, I'm serious."

"So am I." Rin folded her fingers around her jaw and felt her teeth tug in her bottom lip involuntarily while she grinned. "I know I'm good at it."

Len snorted. "You just wanted to hear it coming from me."

"Yeah, 'cause compliments from a janitor are worth so much."

Len tilted his head. "Then, you just wanted to hear it from a cute guy."

Rin very nearly blanched but managed to cover it up with a mocking sneer. "You're no good at this flirting thing."

"You should see me when I'm not with such a beautiful girl."

Nope. Nope, nope, nope, he was a fool and _now_ he's got her _blushing_. Rin turned back to the table, exhausting effort in the fight to keep her place in the conversation, but absolutely nothing came to mind quickly enough.

Len chuckled, leaning down slightly. "Got you there, didn't I?"

"No, it's just, it sounds like I should see you at a lot of different times," Rin managed to answer. She was proud of how level she sounded, just the right amount of spite, and Len reacted to it well – a slowly arching eyebrow, and then he put the cupcake neatly down on the table.

"Sunday."

"What?"

"See me Sunday, then. That's a different time. I mean, the beautiful girl is still gonna be there, but you can just ignore her, if you don't mind."

And Rin's taunting grin melted. It was easily replaced by an elated smile, and she answered, "Sure."

To her pleasure, Len's expression softened as much as hers. Just as he was sliding off the table, reaching for his broom where it had hit the floor, Rin quickly giggled and broke the cupcake he had handled in two. She passed him one half, the icing unequally divided onto his side.

"You just lost us forty cents," Len said. Rin pointedly lifted her cupcake to her lips – it wafted dreamy scents of syrup and sugarcane.

She explained, "You already breathed on it. It's yours now."

He responded to that with a sudden triumphant grin, and sunk his teeth into the cupcake until pink frosting dotted his nose and she could see the curl of a grin behind his hand.

Sunday sounded like a fairytale ending.

**[ -Rin- ]**

Gumi's on her laptop typing away when Rin comes home, and the sounds hardly slow down below hacker speed when Rin peels off her coat and shoes and calls out a greeting. She'd practised in the car to make sure her voice wasn't still hoarse – she only sounds a little Sunday-morning tired now, and Gumi says, "You sound sick!"

"_Thanks_. I'm alright." Rin drifts into the kitchen. Sitting sideways on the staircase with her computer on her knees, Gumi leans around the railing. The long locks of green hair framing her round face are braided, and her eyes are wide with surprise at her roommate's appearance.

"I'm starved." Rin asks, "Do you want me to make you anything to eat?"

"I'm going out for lunch. Besides! You didn't tell me you were leaving this morning! Who did you sneak off and see, Rinny?"

Rin doesn't let herself pause, instead scanning the contents of the refrigerator for something that won't twist up her stomach any further – even though as soon as she left the grounds of the hospital, her illness suddenly began the work of curing itself. Wondering if Gumi really is that daft or is just waiting for her to say the words, Rin answers absently, "Len."

Her normally loquacious roommate goes dead-silent, and the keyboard makes the slightest clicks as she drums her blunt fingernails on the board. Finally she chirps, "Oh! That's really good. How was his fam?"

"I didn't see them." Sandwich it is, then. Lettuce, cold cuts, bread and a cutting board because Gumi always runs in and out of the grocery store too fast to notice she's bought the bread that isn't pre-cut, and neither girl cares much for saving time and slicing it all at once. Yep. Not distracting.

"So, uh, how's Len look?"

"Like he's fallen face-first out of a pro boxing ring."

"That bad?"

"You know him. You pinch the kid and he gets a bruise for a week."

Gumi giggles around her words, "Oh, man, yeah. He was really…with, uh…yeah." And she's diminished into quieting tones. So much for comfort.

Rin clears her throat softly and quickly finishes up her lazy pseudo-meal, bread sliced crookedly as always. Whatever. While the typing picks back up, Rin gets herself a plate and finds her legs carrying herself to the staircase to sit on the platform two spaces beneath Gumi. Far enough to not impose, close enough to feel the familiarity she realises she's been missing all morning. And also to read Gumi's screen.

"Who are you even talking to?" Rin asks, leaning up to catch a better view and make a bigger show of her actually finding out. I can tease. I'm feeling fine.

Gumi squeaks and jerks down the laptop screen. When Rin trivially cocks an eyebrow at her, Gumi clicks back to her senses and then shoves the lid up, giving another exasperated chirp. "Never mind. It's just Gakupo."

"You sound like you forgot."

"It's easy to when you're waiting for someone so much better to come around," Gumi mumbles melodramatically as she sinks in a crescent-moon curve within the staircase, her feet hooking under the railing and chin against her chest. She hastily adds, "He's just helping me with some dumb college stuff. He says he'll let me borrow his old textbooks but I told him he'll break his back trying to bring them all over."

"How nice it must be to be able to get favours from older men," Rin teases, taking a big bite of her food, and her action makes Gumi emit another selection of her squeak-toy exclamations.

"Okay, one, if I wanted to get any of those 'favours' this place would be way busier because we all know I can, and two, you're _not_ making me vacuum again!"

Rin hurriedly swallows so she can laugh. She leans her head against the wall behind them, and for the first time since she came home from what she had aimed to be a cleansing run that would sweep up all possible drama for the next week, she feels like things are quieting down within her. Until her only worry is school and keeping watch over Gumi and assigning chores in the condo. And then Gumi, again, has to open her big mouth.

She turns to Rin with a smile on her face. "Are you gonna go back to see him again?"

Rin blinks in surprise, then turns back to her food to avoid answering for a few extra seconds. Unfortunately, with Gumi's eyes on her like that, she can't chew all that slow. "I think there was…a really good talk this time. Well, one-sided talk. But you know what I mean."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm pretty sure. Yep. I felt a lot better," she lies and takes another muffling bite. Gumi types a few more things distractedly then picks the conversation up again. Luckily Rin knew her too well to let her heart ease in those few moments of silence.

"Why don't you go see him again? If it went so well, maybe it'll go even better!"

"I'm serious, I think it went really great. There really isn't anything left for me to say, and it's not like he can really bring up anything new."

"Can never get enough of a good thing," Gumi obnoxiously sing-songs.

Gumi might not know if Rin is faking or not, despite her lie being about as transparent as a Bible page. But she's proud of herself for making Rin go this far, that's for sure. Rin scowls into her badly cut bread. Then she says with false energy, "Well then, do you wanna come with me next time?"

"Oh, nope. You're not exactly an open book and I'm gonna just clam you up more, like usual, see? You should go alone."

Rin leans her head back again but out of annoyance this time, forcibly keeping her eyes open and out of a glare. "Gumi, it went well. There's nothing else to do."

One of the girls wants to keep her manners, and apparently it isn't Gumi. She uses the tempting idea of a glower to her full advantage, even if it's nearly impossible for Gumi to look scary. Especially when she puffs out her cheeks like that. Rin sourly smiles to defer it.

"You've been fighting with him for months and you don't tell me _anything_. I think there's a lot more to do."

"Gumi – "

She is silenced by a rapping on the front door, which, bookended with Gumi's capricious attitude that now swoops into elated, leaves Rin scrambling for both her balance on the stairwell and a hold on what weaponry to bring up against Gumi's next attitude. The green-haired girl calls out, "Come in!" far louder than necessary as she bounds over Rin's legs, down the stairs, and flinging open the front door before the guest can even try to open it like she'd ordered.

Rin smirks to herself at the sight of Gumi's boyfriend – he's been dating her for seven months and still always manages to look alarmed by her outbursts. At least they're positive outbursts.

After giving her an inviting kiss on the lips, Yuuma smiles in his usual subdued way at Rin through the poles of the railing. "Hey, there."

Rin waves shortly over a mouthful of food.

Gumi is clinging to his arm, staring up at him. Rin has always thought they were an artist's caricature of a couple, perhaps – Yuuma was tall and quiet, nearly distressingly thin with a permanent unintentionally sharp glare and, as she recalls, sharper words when he needed to. Gumi, on the other hand: petite, undeniably loud, dubbed depthless by the boys in their high school who thought they were doing a favour to the population by considering girls who were "more than just a body", and she rarely ever got angry – if she even hovered on an emotion enough to really fully describe it, that is.

Rin doesn't want to be a pessimist, and especially not to project it on them, but for all her appreciation for Yuuma, Gumi needs someone that can keep up with her and not someone who would stand by and watch.

Oh well.

Gumi says, "You're kind of late, you know?" She's pawing at his sleeve, suddenly transformed from Rin's nagging sister to doting girlfriend.

Rin remembers that they got together when things were getting especially bad with Len and she knew she was not any more pleasant to be around than her ex was. Gumi was making more and more excuses to leave, as if to avoid a breaking point Rin wasn't even sure Gumi had, and apparently Yuuma took this as a sign that she actually liked him and asked her out. New relationship while her best friend was trying to salvage the broken pieces of her own so she didn't accidentally step on them and lose a foot to fricking tetanus. Presto.

"Plenty of ways to make it back up," he answers with a hand finding its way on her waist. And she just giggles like a little kid, and Rin allows Gumi to be the most feminine one in the room for once by shoving another huge bite into her mouth.

"Bye, Rinny!" Gumi sing-songs, and Rin only has time to look over her knees at Gumi yanking open the door before the green-haired girl is gone instantly into the sun. Her shadow on the welcome mat hops around to get on her shoes, but Yuuma hesitates inside the house.

He looks at her.

Those yellow eyes should make her want to shrink down but she's dealt with too much today and a living boy she doesn't even remember the last name of isn't going to give her another sliver of self-imposed torture. She swallows hard and salutes him to tell him to go.

Wordless, he nods, and then waves. And he's gone. The door shuts, and the condo is hers.

So she just finishes her sandwich.

No, seriously, it really does make her feel better. She'd skipped breakfast this morning because of her rush and the civil war going on with her organs. Having substance inside makes her feel more grounded, at the very least, like she won't float away from the town to try and escape again, nor float to the hospital to give him another look.

Gumi's computer pings.

Rin glances over – it still sits on the stairs, precarious amount of its weight unsupported by anything, the green-skinned lid three-quarters of the way down like she had tried to shut it off.

Rin's mind quickly scans over the current info: lonely precious computer, alone in the house, and she's a bitch.

She may as well just log it off, if anything. Wouldn't want one of Gumi's thousand friends thinking she's ignoring them.

Rin carefully opens the lid, making sure to not get any crumbs on the keyboard. A chat box is open, sure, and it's with Gakupo, and that conversation had died quickly and started out of nowhere – Gakupo isn't even online anymore. Meanwhile, in the corner, an orange bubble repeatedly pops to get her attention.

Rin carefully clicks on it.

Amongst the gif emoticons glittering incessantly from every corner of Gumi's dialogue, there is Dell's strict black text.

Gumi lied. She'd been talking to Dell.

Dell is Len's cousin.

She spots her name and her stomach twists, but Rin scrolls up anyways. The Skype screen lags as she orders it to gather old logs from hours ago, but instead it can only offer Rin the latest of their talks today – fifty-three minutes ago.

She angles the computer towards herself and reads.

* * *

**.a/n.:** Thanks for the support so far ^^ If anyone were to review with any feedback at all it would make me really happy so y'know. Hah.


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